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“Correct.” I managed a small, sad chuckle. “I never went back to school. I was pregnant. My heart was in pieces. I wasn’t in the right headspace or lifespace to resume.”
“Wow.” Dylan breathed. “That’s—”
“A lie, I know.” I shrugged. “But just because I don’t have an official degree doesn’t mean I’m not a marine biologist. I’m second generation. I’ve dedicated my life to the ocean.”
“You were saying...?” Margot prompted, cutting Dylan’s surprise off at the knees.
For a moment, I forgot. Old age made my mind a little dithery, but then I remembered and continued, “My father stayed down south for a few days, packing up our things. He donated our second-hand furniture and brought back boxes of clothes and mementos. He closed that chapter of our lives so I didn’t have to, and when I padded down to the beach at three in the morning—which had become my habit to scream at the moon for taking Aslan from me—I stopped and just stared at those boxes stacked in the garage.
“I found myself opening a box and on the top was my sunset dress. The exact replica to the one I’d worn when I was raped. The one I’d been wearing when Aslan had been beaten and shoved into the street.”
“Oh, no.” Margot gasped. “That dress was cursed.”
“It was.”
“W-What did you do?”
“I did what any grieving young widow would do. I lost myself. I fell into fury for that dress. For that bad omen. That cursed piece of clothing. I took the box holding Aslan’s work shorts and well-worn t-shirts, jumbled together with my pretty skirts and tops, and I placed them in a pile on his bed in the sala.
“The sala where I’d slept ever since Aslan had gone. The sala that used to hold so many happy dreams but now only swirled with nightmares. I bundled up the sunset dress. I poured my mother’s favourite lychee liqueur over it, stole my father’s lighter that he used for an occasional cigar, and...I set it all on fire.”
“Oh my God.” Margot reared back. “You set the sala on fire?”
“I destroyed it. Aslan had lived in the bottom of our garden for six years. He was family, yet he hadn’t been permitted to live in our house—no matter how cramped that might have been. I think, in that moment, I hated my parents for that. I hated that he’d been designated a kennel like the family’s pet outside. I had so many emotions coursing through me. Some evil, some tortured, some completely crazy. I believed if he’d just lived permanently in the guest room, he wouldn’t have been found. He wouldn’t have been hurt. He wouldn’t have been killed.
“It was that insane logic that made me burn it to the ground, my dress included. The dress that caused the two worst events of my life.
“I watched the fire chew through our clothing. I stepped back as it ignited Aslan’s bed. I tripped down the three steps as the walls caught fire. And I waded into the pool clutching Aslan’s shell as the roof blazed.
“It only burned wildly for a few moments before my dad came running. The neighbours called the fire department, and it was put out not long after.”
“Did the structure survive?” Dylan asked.
“Not really. Everything was black char and oily runoff. It took my poor father weeks to clean up the mess and a full skip hire to get the rubble to the dump. He turned the remaining platform into an outdoor sitting area with two lonely chairs and a wave sculpture my mother found at a local market. It was quaint, but no matter how many potted flowers my mother planted, it never quite shed off its shadows. Even in full sunlight, it had the otherworldly aura of a cemetery.”
“Where did you sleep after you burned it down?” Margot hugged herself. “If you couldn’t stomach to be in the house and you burned down the one place where you felt close to Aslan...where did you go?”
I caught her eyes and sighed. “Teddy and Eddie’s.”
“What do you mean?” Her forehead wrinkled. “You moved in with them?”
“I wasn’t really given a choice.” I shook my head, remembering the intervention. The panic in my mother’s kind stare. The hesitant way my father touched me as if I’d break beneath his touch. They’d not only lost Aslan, but they also had to watch their daughter spiral. Their very pregnant daughter. Their daughter who’d turned into a living ghost, dwelling in this life and the afterlife, still unsure if she wanted to remain or go.
“Teddy never did anything by halves,” I said. “When I told him the best place to anchor an underwater community was the Great Barrier Reef, he took that suggestion and ran with it. Eddie wanted to make a mark on this world and believed wholeheartedly in his new husband’s crazy idea to try something impossible. While I’d been studying in Townsville, they’d found a run-down sprawling three-bedroom house only a few streets away from my parents. They’d scrimped and saved for the down payment and taken possession a few months before Aslan died.
“I hadn’t even seen their place. They’d given us a video tour one night when we’d had one of our regular brainstorming, drinking sessions, but it was foreign to me. A fresh start where no memories of Aslan would haunt me and nothing could trigger me to break. When Dad called Honey to ask for her help with my mental state, she turned to Teddy. She and Billy were still in Sydney and too far away to be of immediate help, so...she asked her brother to save me.”
“Save you how?”
“By taking me in.”
“As a charity case?”
“As a protective measure for their business. You see...we’d already applied for a company name the year before. We’d been practically giddy as we FaceTimed and signed the documents that listed me and Aslan, Teddy and Eddie as equal shares in the Latin named creation Lunamare.”
“You did say Aslan was the one who named it. How did that happen?” Dylan asked gently.
“Well, for one thing. Naming a company is hard. All the good ideas are taken and after a while, frustration kicked in. Once we’d exhausted everyone’s suggestions, Aslan had kissed me and whispered, “‘Why don’t we name it after the forces that brought us together?’”
